You were probably bored during Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, but were you “film an entire documentary in Grand Theft Auto Online” bored? Grand Theft Hamlet is just that sort of project, and after winning the documentary feature jury award at SXSW this year, it’s going to get a theatrical and streaming release.
As reported in The Hollywood Reporter, independent and art house streaming service Mubi has acquired the rights to distribute Grand Theft Hamlet, a documentary that follows two actors who want to stage a production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in GTA Online‘s world. If the clip below is any indication, they run into some issues, as is expected for a game where provoking violence against others is part of the fun.
The film will release in the U.K. first at the BFI London Film Festival next week before coming to theaters in early 2025, although Mubi hasn’t revealed official details yet. An official Mubi post on X (formerly Twitter) called it “an innovative, immersive take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.”
An innovative, immersive take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, shot entirely inside the world of Grand Theft Auto, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s festival hit GRAND THEFT HAMLET is coming soon to US theaters + streaming globally. pic.twitter.com/6FMYCt5423
— MUBI (@mubi) October 10, 2024
Grand Theft Hamlet is a machinima akin to long-running Halo parody Red vs. Blue, where a creator films scenes entirely inside a game engine. While this is still practiced today — the most well-known, mainstream modern example is probably Skibidi Toilet, which is made in Source Filmmaker using a lot of Valve assets — it’s not as widespread as it was in the heyday of YouTube and the web series boom.
I doubt it’s going to usher in a new wave of successful machinima productions, but still, it’s rare that you see a movie like this hit theaters. In an industry full of video game adaptations, it might be worth it to see a game depicted as it is on the big screen. It’s unclear if it’ll hit theaters before the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6, though.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.